Sacred Texts  Asia 

KORYAK TEXTS

by Waldemar Bogoras

[1917]

This is a collection of mythological texts from the Koryak, a traditional people who live on the Kamchatka peninsula, in the far east of Russia. The similarity of these tales to native American folklore, particularly from the Northwestern region, is very striking. The characters, although they occupy a supernatural dream-world, move in the same context as the people who tell the stories, hunting, fishing and gathering, celebrating good hunts and going hungry when there is no food. There are trickster figures, and stories about them include gruesome and/or scatological pranks. One gets a vivid sense of the brutal environment which the Koryak inhabited.